The Expendables
In Sylvester Stallone's new action blockbuster, a team of mercenaries is hired to overthrow a South American dictator.
Directed by Sylvester Stallone
(R)
**
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The Expendables is a “deliriously retro ride into Reagan-era blockbusters,” said Roger Moore in the Orlando Sentinel. The film starts with a brief reunion of three men who were the “pride and joy of big, bloody ’80s action movies”—Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis. The latter two only have cameos, but writer-director Stallone also stars, as part of a team of mercenaries hired to overthrow a South American dictator. Sweat and testosterone “drip off the screen” as he joins forces with action-movie heirs Jet Li and Jason Statham. Stallone “whips up a blizzard of violence” that makes his ’80s films look quaint, said Nick Pinkerton in The Village Voice. Napalm smoke seems omnipresent, and he throws in a preposterous scene in which the bad guys resort to waterboarding. Still, The Expendables earns its stripes with plenty of old-school physical combat, said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. “Completely low-tech” but fun nonetheless, the film sticks to its “primitive guns”—and thus may provoke nostalgia, among some, for the days before computer-generated graphics.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation: the group behind Gaza's controversial new aid programme
The Explainer Deadly shootings and chaotic scenes have been reported at aid sites after US group replaced UN humanitarian organisations
-
Is UK's new defence plan transformational or too little, too late?
Today's Big Question Labour's 10-year strategy 'an exercise in tightly bounded ambition' already 'overshadowed by a row over money'
-
How much should doctors trust parental intuition?
In The Spotlight Study finds parents' concern can be better at spotting critical illness than vital signs